The Imam Shamil Battalion has claimed responsibility for the April 3 metro bombing in St. Petersburg and conveyed that the attack was retaliation against Russia’s targeting of jihadis in Syria, Libya and Chechnya.

The political reality in PoK is that ‘azadi’ is a chimera, and substantive control of the area is shared between terrorist organisations such as the LeT and HM and the political elite of Islamabad. However, a narrative has been fed in the Kashmir Valley that Pakistan is a more favourable option than India.